Classic Poem

Your representative has seen the Serpent of Old Nilus
About the Antony Affair; and never has my stylus

Been called upon before to sketch a character so charming ...
Although, at times, Her Majesty has moods that are alarming . . . .

" I Live my Own Life, " Cleopatra said, " and my intent is
To persevere in that respect; I'll follow what my bent is!

" You say that Fulvia's suing me for eighty thousand dollars?
A Woman who can't Hold her Husband always peeves and hollers!

" But what a bourgeois thing to do! How common! And how Roman!
By Isis, kid, a thoroughbred would put a price on no man! "

The queen received me on the roof directly after dinner;
She's looking ... well, she is some queen! Perhaps a trifle thinner.

Than when she met Jule Caesar on that gink's Egyptian mission ...
The time he told his wife she'd ought to be above suspicion. . . .

She gave me coffee in a cup carved from a single ruby;
As she was pouring it a slave, a thick thumb-handed booby,

Spilled some upon her royal neek, which rather riled our queenlet —
She swung a jewelled seimitar and nicked his Nubian beanlet. . . .

The Nile, below us, squirmed and flashed with phosphorescent fishes,
And now and then a crocodile, content and unambitious,

Would root against the palace steps and scratch his back and bellow,
Or some lorn hippopotamus would warble for his fellow ...

And now and then, as we conversed, the queen, in merry mood O!
Would kick a courtier from the roof to give her pets their food O!

" I loathe Conventions, " said the queen. " My Soul cannot be harried
With Trivial Things! I will not be Victorian, Trammelled, Married!

" I gotta be Myself , old kid, and if as such I break up
Some Home monogamous, what then? I cannot help my make-up!

" Soul-mates are Soul-mates! Get me, kid? I always had a leaning
Towards Freedom, kid! You otta Give your Love a Higher Meaning!

" You got that down? I must express myself! — And you might mention
That to my mind there's nothing as wicked as Convention! "

" Serpent, " I said, " another point perhaps you'd care to answer:
Fulvia has spread the word, from Capricorn to Cancer,

" That while you have the will to be a reg'lar Moral Leper
She has you faded, frail to frail, for pulchritude and pepper —

" She says, in short, your Work is Coarse, your tricks are out of kilter,
And that you'd not 'a' trapped her Mark but that you used a philtre. "

" Did she say that? " Miss Ptolemy rose, ferocious as a Bulgar,
Then calmed herself and murmured low: " My Gawd! How crude and vulgar!

" You paint 'em blue, or chalk 'em white, or rub 'em with erasers,
Their Commonplaceness will stick out on all these Commonplacers!

" This Mrs. Marcus Antony is really quite pathetic;
It's Personality that wins, not Poses or Cosmetic —

" But why should I get sore at her? I'll not descend to bandy
Words with such a low-browed skirt ... nor send her poisoned candy. "

And yet it seemed to me the queen, beneath her calm external,
Was somewhat stung: for as I left I heard a noise infernal:

Next day I learned that she had loosed a large man eating tiger ...
A pet particular of hers brought northward from the Niger ...

Among her royal servants who, in rushing from the palace,
Were met by waiting crocodiles. I think she harbours malice . . . .

She took a dozen female slaves and named each " Mrs. Tony, "
And fed them to the ibises, and did it all-aloney!

Sometimes our little queen is calm, sweet-natured, soft and gentle;
And then again she's something else ... She calls it " Temper'mental. "